"The Twisted Wood of Humans"

We live in uncertain times. And when times are uncertain, theories dance. Trump and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza increase uncertainties about the future. There are many types: the peace-war tandem, the struggle for hegemony between two empires (the US and China) and three major nuclear powers (Russia is also added), the shadows of various energy sources and water, a global population growth of around 20-25% in the coming decades, fundamental uncertainties, fundamental uncertainties, fundamental uncertainties, etc. The result is a colorful tapestry of fragmented uncertainties.

In recent centuries, modern science (Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein) and the Enlightenment (Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche) have disenchanted societies with their ideological systems of power. However, the Enlightenment tradition has cast new spells on human reason, especially in the political sphere.

1859 was a good year in terms of thinking. The Origin of Species (Darwin) and On freedom (Stuart Mill).

Darwin transformed the way we think about ourselves. He made the past no longer what it was by establishing continuity among living beings—a finding that genetics has ratified and refined. We know that evolution doesn't provide the best for humans, but rather what's good enough to get by. Our brains have developed often contradictory capacities to survive and reproduce in hostile environments, but they do so based on quick decisions made with incomplete information. As primates, humans exhibit four characteristic traits: we are territorial, group-based, gregarious, and hierarchical. A confluence of selfishness and solidarity, competition and cooperation, aggression and empathy. When developing moral and political theories, it's important not to forget that we carry atavistic elements in the functioning of our bodies and minds.

For his part, Stuart Mill pointed out both the limitations of conservatism and the "shadows" that overshadow emancipatory revolutions: limits on freedoms and equity, institutional deficiencies, shortcomings in the rights of women and minorities, etc. In general terms, the liberal combination of individualism and universalism was liberating. However, both concepts encourage abstraction and ignore the social, linguistic, and cultural ties that empirically characterize us as individuals. The early Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer) captured well—much better than the superficialities of "postmodernism"—the ambivalent logic of the "dialectic of Enlightenment": it created communist utopias and "new men" who presented themselves as highly "practiced" but who revealed themselves in highly practical theories.

Combining Darwin and S. Mill, we see that in Western culture there is a contrast between moral and political discourses with a universalist vocation and behaviors, which remain essentially group-based. We humans have become "civilized," that is, we have learned to cooperate and repress non-compliance with group norms—despite inequalities, poverty, and social exclusion. However, civilizing groups remains largely unfinished. Wars are common and are simultaneously a display of intergroup aggression and group solidarity. Domestic and international politics have traits with distinct evolutionary origins.

The practical limits of contemporary theories are often hidden in the universalist glare of the Enlightenment (Shelley: "Hidden in the light of thought"). This can be exemplified by the interplay of considering Kant's ideas in light of Darwin's later ideas.

Kant is the philosopher of human dignity. What would he have thought of his moral theory if he had known Darwin's theory of evolution? At least I think three things would have happened. Western philosophy), since the empire of reason, in the end, turns out to be a much smaller empire than the one advocated by the Enlightenment. The "crooked," tormented, and unconventional nature of which humans are made, simple and "straight" ideas do not adapt well—an idea that would give rise in the 20th century to an influential book of political theory by Isaiah Berlin.

It's not a matter, as is sometimes said, of moving from anecdote to category. This is only the first step. Then it's necessary to move again from category to the anecdotes of empirical realities. And to see what the categories yield in practical terms. Theories that aim to be as straight as a pine tree are inapplicable to the twisted olive wood, through evolutionary accumulation, that shapes humans.

Following S. Mill's approach, in the face of phenomena like Trump and other extreme right-wing and left-wing movements, rather than achieving heaven on earth, we must avoid the hells created in the name of liberty, nation, or justice. It is necessary to combat, with institutions and policies, the dreams of reason, little aware of its evolutionary traits. We must carefully reflect on what human empirical facts tell us. And we must think more about politics from the perspective of science and history. Kant, yes, but after Mill and Darwin.